Reminders - Closed for Repair
by Faith-fanfic16
Summary: 1) Reminders: Imaginary beaches can only do so much. Arizona wakes up from a severe episode of phantom limb pain and this time she can't hide it from Callie. 2) Closed for Repair: When a person only has one leg and a newly fitted prosthetic, certain situations can suck more than others – as Arizona quickly discovers when the elevator in their apartment building breaks down.


_**1. Reminders**_

It wasn't that Arizona had forgotten about Mark, or how Sofia was missing her father, or that there was this empty apartment taunting them from across the hall. Callie probably thought she didn't care anymore, or that Arizona resented her for still grieving almost seven months after the accident. Arizona cared, she did; she just didn't talk about it. She didn't talk about any of it – the crash, Mark vomiting blood in her lap, hearing Lexie be torn apart by scavengers. Ever since she had climbed out of the dark abyss that had threatened to swallow her whole, she ignored those memories in her waking hours and instead focused on her work, their growing daughter, and mending her relationship with Callie.

At first it was all but impossible, and there were moments where the grief and flashbacks would nearly consume her. She knew that Callie knew. Leaning heavily against the kitchen counter in the middle of preparing dinner or staring at the far wall while frozen in her wheelchair, those weren't things that a person was prone to missing. Yet they never talked about it. Callie would just bring her back to the present as gently as she could, hovering while trying not to look like she was hovering, and they would continue on as though nothing had happened. She was obviously afraid of setting Arizona off again, and Arizona couldn't really blame her after the way she had acted post-amputation.

Eventually those moments became fewer and farther between, until she was able to control them and redirect her focus in a more productive way. At night, however, it was a whole different ball game.

Her subconscious was kind of a bitch, she learned as time went on. Some nights she would barely sleep at all, while others she would fall in so deeply that the nightmares would tear her unwillingly back to the surface and make her feel like a ton of bricks had been stuffed through her ears. It was all compounded by the fact that her leg – the goddamn leg that wasn't even _there_ anymore – hurt so badly that she thought she might die on several occasions. It was like she could feel it being incinerated along with the rest of the bio-waste discarded from the OR, nevermind that it had been long gone for over six months.

It took a while for Arizona to understand just how complicated phantom limb pain really was. As a physician she knew all about it; Callie had discussed it on more than one occasion with regards to her patients. But actually experiencing it, actually going through the motions of feeling pain in a part of her body that no longer existed…it was a hell of a thing.

It stood to reason that after everything the universe had put her through over the years, the pain would grow into the worst possible kind. She didn't get off easily just because she fell out of the sky, or her girlfriend went through a windshield, or her baby nearly died, or her brother was blown to pieces by an IED, or her best friend died of cancer while she was in a medically-induced coma for two days. It wasn't a simple tingle or itch, there were no pins and needles; it was excruciating and only seemed to get worse whenever she closed her eyes. Arizona wondered if there would ever come a day when she didn't wake up in the middle of the night feeling like someone was sawing her leg off with a butter knife.

Amidst the shambles of a marriage they were desperately trying to rebuild, she finally started to see a light at the end of the tunnel - which was why she stopped telling Callie just how bad the phantom limb situation really was. Callie needed a wife, not a patient to share her bed with. Arizona told Owen as much while he forced her to visit imaginary beaches and calm the tsunami-force waves that woke her up for a string of seven days in a row. She reached the end of her rope when they started haunting her in her waking hours, too. There was only so much a person in her state could take.

She liked to think that Callie was oblivious but her wife was not a dumb person. After three mornings of waking up alone and finding Arizona locked in the bathroom, even Callie started looking at her like a surgeon looks at a complicated case file. Arizona hated that look when it was directed her way, so she lied through her teeth and said that everything was fine.

The beaches, the mirrors, even stabbing her prosthetic only worked while she was functioning and alert. Sometimes it snuck up on her without warning and all she could do was grit her teeth and bear it.

**#*#***

When Arizona woke up at the end of a very long week, she was convinced that she was trapped inside the burning fuselage and that something was trying to chew her leg off at the thigh. Mark was nothing but a bloody, unrecognizable mass thrown across her lap, and somewhere in the woods, her baby girl was screaming for her Mama. It was a nightmare that repeated itself more often than not and always ended with her jolting awake in a panic.

She must have cried out on instinct because suddenly Callie was beside her and a comforting arm curled itself around her waist. Arizona didn't even realize she was sobbing until Callie wiped the tears from her eyes and held her close as a violent tremor wracked her entire body.

"Try and breathe through it," Callie coaxed in a husky whisper that, for once, failed to provide any clarity. Arizona's leg was being hacked to pieces by an invisible force and nothing either of them could do would stop it.

A cold layer of sweat glued Arizona's nightshirt to her chest and she tried repeatedly to gasp for air. Without her eyes adjusted to the dark, she was positive that their bed was soaked in her own blood. There was no other explanation for this level of pain – the incision must have split open. That had to be it. Nothing else made sense.

"Callie," Arizona whimpered, the sound hoarse and unfamiliar to her own ears. She couldn't bring herself to reach for the bedside lamp, but luckily her wife could read her mind and a dim light suddenly flooded the room.

She ripped back the covers as Callie moved to sit directly behind her. It was an automatic response when Arizona slumped into her arms, letting her take most of the weight as she tried to focus on stopping the false sensations. For all intents and purposes, her residual limb seemed perfectly fine. It nearly drove her off the deep end.

"Just breathe," Callie repeated, brushing a soft kiss against Arizona's ear and swiping damp strands of hair away from her eyes. The other arm curled protectively around her waist. "Try to focus on your leg; nothing is wrong with it. You're okay."

Except she wasn't. No matter how many times Arizona replayed Karev's scalpel imbedding itself in her plastic foot, her brain just wouldn't shut up. She gasped again, her fingers clenching and unclenching around the drenched bed sheets. Callie's quiet words of encouragement became a murmur of background noise and, after a few minutes of fighting it, she knew she was going to be sick.

Mumbling an incoherent excuse, Arizona clambered out of bed, grabbing her crutches. She was barely aware of Callie scrambling to keep up as she all but fell into their en-suite bathroom, collapsing to the floor and wrenching open the lid of the toilet.

Callie never left her side, looking away and cringing as the remnants of her wife's stomach contents emptied themselves into the porcelain bowl. The tightness in her chest grew when Arizona let out a choking sob before releasing more bile, gagging so forcefully that she nearly stopped breathing altogether. Callie gathered up what hair she could and held it out of harm's way, resting her other hand on the small of Arizona's back and waiting for the worst of it to be over.

The moment passed, and only when Arizona could control her breathing did she fumble around to flush the toilet. Callie silently pulled the blonde curls into a loose bun and secured them with an elastic from the bathroom counter. She stood up to fill a plastic cup with lukewarm water, handing it down to the sullen form on the floor and waiting patiently for her to swirl the liquid around her mouth before spitting it into the toilet. Callie then gathered the shaking woman into her arms and leaned them both back against the outer wall of the shower. The fact that Arizona didn't resist told her just how bad it was.

"Tell me what I can do," Callie whispered, dipping her nose into the nape of Arizona's neck.

"M-mirror," Arizona said hoarsely, gulping in air before wheezing through another wave of pain.

Callie stayed seated with both legs stretched out on either side of Arizona's body, reaching for the half-length mirror that rested next to the wall. Over the last week Arizona hadn't even bothered to hang it up again, a sure sign that things were getting progressively worse.

As the shaking in her hands had yet to stop, Arizona sat passively while Callie wedged the mirror between her stump and right leg, adjusting it until, in her vision, she was whole again.

It took a good thirty or forty seconds of hard staring for the sensations to begin to dull. She wiggled her toes and flexed the arch of her right foot. The intensity receded enough that she was able to focus on her breathing, no longer concerned about throwing up again. She didn't even have the energy to move or ask Callie to leave her be. At this point, the cat was pretty much out of the bag and up a tree.

That didn't make her feel any less humiliated, though. Arizona's bottom lip quivered as a tiny whimpered escaped her throat.

Callie's heart lay shattered in her chest, each and every sound her wife made crushing the remaining shards into dust. She knew Arizona's habits inside and out after more than four years together, so she waited until it seemed safe enough to speak.

"I thought it was getting better."

"Me too," Arizona said weakly. "I-it comes and goes. Tonight is..."

"Bad."

"Yeah."

Callie nuzzled the side of Arizona's neck again, squeezing the arm wrapped securely around her middle. "Owen said it's started happening at work." Arizona turned her head to frown at Callie, who continued without trepidation. "Honey, Karev stabbed you in the foot during surgery. I was bound to hear about it sooner or later."

Arizona dropped her head back against Callie's shoulder. "I'm sorry."

"I wish you'd told me sooner."

"Thought I could get away without it being obvious."

Callie sighed and ran her palm along her wife's bicep. "It's only been eight months. Things could get better."

"Maybe."

A beat of silence passed. "How often?"

"The worst has always been at night, then last week it started up at work too," Arizona admitted. "Owen's been helping me figure out ways to control it. It's been getting better during the day, but when I fall asleep..."

"The nightmares make it worse," Callie said tentatively. Arizona sometimes mumbled in her sleep. Callie wondered if she knew how many times she had held her through the bad dreams.

"Yeah." Arizona's voice was thick and she was forced to swallow the growing lump in the back of her throat. "It's always the same. The woods, the…the noises. The pain. Mark, the others..."

Callie's chest constricted again. She had never heard a word out of Arizona's mouth about those four days, and she couldn't bring herself to ask for details after the hell she had endured herself during that time. Some naïve part of her deep down had hoped and prayed that Arizona simply didn't remember much of what she had gone through.

"There's surgery. It could help deaden the nerve endings and might stop these flare ups." It wouldn't fix the nightmares but it was something. Callie would suggest witchcraft if she thought it could take away an ounce of Arizona's discomfort.

Resistant to going under the knife again until now, Arizona suddenly found herself nodding along. "I'm thinking about it."

"Hunt could do it." Callie placed a delicate kiss along the back of Arizona's jaw. "Or I could find someone else. I know a few guys in Oregon that are really good; we could go to them if you want."

Arizona hummed quietly, feeling a wave of exhaustion hit her the moment the throbbing in her limb began to dissipate. For the first time she became aware of her bare leg stretched out alongside Callie's behind the mirror. Its rounded edge stopped a few inches short of the other woman's knee. The stark reminder never failed to send a sharp jolt through her belly, but she was too weak to move, let alone protest being so close. It was, in a strange way, the most intimate they had been since the accident.

"Can we just stay here for a little while?" she murmured tiredly.

Callie closed her eyes and held Arizona in a comforting embrace. "For as long as you need. I'm not going anywhere."

* * *

_**2. Closed for Repair**_

_'CLOSED FOR REPAIR'_

Arizona's fingers tightened around the grip of her cane.

Of course it was.

She huffed in annoyance as the rest of the Torres-Robbins family drew closer, eventually coming to a stop behind her.

"Oh, you've got to be _kidding_ me," Callie growled in exasperation, narrowing her eyes at the note taped to the elevator doors. Both arms were full, with Sofia on one side and three bags on the other – two purses and the little girl's daycare tote. She highly doubted she could add Arizona to the mix, especially all the way down to the lobby.

Arizona turned to her wife with a wry smile. "It figures we live on the five-_hundredth_ floor," she teased. "And that I have surgery in forty-five minutes."

Callie looked genuinely concerned as she juggled Sofia in an attempt to balance the squirmy toddler. "This is getting ridiculous. What if there was a fire?"

"I don't think you're supposed to use the elevator in case of emergency."

Callie rolled her eyes. "Great. That makes me feel so much better."

"C'mon," Arizona said with a short laugh, shaking her head as she led her family over to the stairwell. "You might want to get out your cellphone camera. This could be kind of funny."

Underneath the sarcasm, Callie was able to detect Arizona's irritation with her own limitations. "Are you sure? Maybe we should call ahead and tell Karev you have to cancel this morning."

Arizona shot her a sharp look as she balanced at the top of the landing, shifting the cane to her left hand and gripping the guardrail with her right. "I am not phoning in sick just because the elevator is broken, Callie. This isn't kindergarten. I can do stairs."

Well, some stairs. She had managed a whole flight at normal speed without falling into David the last time they practiced. Five storeys would provide a different sort of challenge altogether. Maybe she could convince Callie to grab some of Mark's old camping supplies so she could take a breather on the second or third level.

Callie pursed her lips and let the snarky remark slide. She adjusted Sofia again, wincing as the toddler pulled on her hair and drooled on her shoulder. "Okay, just be careful."

Fighting off the urge to snap at Callie – after all, her wife hadn't gone and broken the elevator – Arizona gritted her teeth and started down the first few steps. Her movements were jerky and uneven, a side effect of her temporary prosthetic's troublesome knee. When she eventually – presumably – made it to work, she would have to stop by and get her prosthesis to lubricate the joint again. At this rate, she probably should call Karev and tell him to start without her.

One of these days she was going to bribe David into fast-tracking her permanent leg. The computer chip-controlled hydraulic system that the newer model had in the knee left Arizona desiring it much, much more as she fumbled her way to the fourth floor on the old one.

Callie was being patient and keeping pace, obviously anxious but not rushing her in any way. It made Arizona feel self-conscious, so she looked over at her wife as they paused on the next landing.

"You should go ahead," she urged, hoping she didn't look as sweaty and uncomfortable as she was beginning to feel. She was met with silence. "Calliope, I'll be fine, really. This could take a while."

Callie pursed her lips. "I'm not leaving you."

Arizona blew a strand of hair out of her eyes, managing a tiny grin as she dug her cane into the next step for extra support. "You're sweet. At least you have the perfect excuse for being late – nobody will get mad at you for helping your crippled wife climb down a whole building's worth of stairs."

Callie grimaced at Arizona's choice of words. She really hated when she talked about herself that way. "They can wait," she said quietly, sending her partner a gentle smile.

Sofia chose that moment to lift her head from her madre's shoulder and tug insistently on her jacket. "Mami," she whined. "Potty."

Callie closed her eyes. Of course.

"Can you try _really_ hard to hold it just a tiny bit longer for Mami, sweetie?"

Sofia whined in response. "Potty _now_."

Arizona grimaced. "Uh-oh. I think that's a 'no'."

Sofia was still in the early stages of potty training, and while she had on her training diapers in case of emergency, she tended to get really upset if she had an accident. Callie was torn between making a run for the public washroom on the first floor and hoping their daughter could hold it for another five minutes.

They were only two and a half flights down though and Arizona could feel herself starting to falter. "Callie, it's gonna take me too long to get there. Just go, I promise I'll be okay."

Callie looked pained at the idea of leaving but Sofia was getting more and more impatient by the second. "Okay, just...take your time and wait for us by the mailbox when you're done. Please be careful."

Arizona mustered up the best smile she could manage. "I've got this. Go ahead."

Shooting Arizona one last nod of encouragement, Callie adjusted Sofia on her hip and hurried down the stairs, coaxing the little girl to hold it in.

Arizona had only made it half a storey more by the time the echo of the main door closing reached her. At this point she had gone three full storeys, and while the high ceilings of each apartment made the building desirable in an aesthetic sense, it also meant that every level had a ton of extra stairs. She was barely halfway done and totally zonked. And also sweaty, which was gross. Alex was bound to make fun of her if she showed up stinky and with crazy person hair.

But, bound and determined to see this through - mostly because going back up was even less of an option - Arizona counted to ten before descending another flight.

All in all, it took her just over ten minutes to go from their apartment to the main floor, with the second half taking the most time. This was the most trouble she'd had since her first few weeks of getting used to the prosthetic. Just recently she had started to feel like she was mastering the thing, and today was pretty much a giant smackdown on her confidence.

Arizona was shaking and leaning as much weight as possible into her cane when she pushed open the door to the lobby. Droplets of sweat rolled down her forehead in pairs of two. The last thing she wanted to do was pass out on the incredibly hard marble floor, so she focused on the bench that lined the far wall and forced herself towards it. As soon as she arrived, she sat down with a wheezing grunt and slumped into the wall, dropping her head against the end of the row of mailboxes.

She was completely spent and couldn't even fathom how in the hell she was supposed to get to the hospital by foot.

Callie emerged from the bathroom with a chipper Sofia still drying her hands on a paper towel. She looked around and spotted Arizona in their designated meeting place, but the fact that she looked as white as a sheet killed any sort of planned celebrations for the milestone trek.

"Shi- crud," Callie corrected as she mumbled under her breath, jogging over with Sofia and their bags bouncing against her sides. She dumped the purses and tote, setting Sofia beside her Mama on the bench before kneeling down in front of Arizona. "Honey, are you okay?"

Arizona's heart was still pounding and her breathing was erratic, but she managed to open her eyes and shoot Callie a weak smile anyway. "I did it. Yay."

Callie was already shaking her head, completely furious as she dug out her cellphone. "I'm calling the building manager right now. This is a load of bull-you-know-what."

Arizona chuckled, dropping a hand to cover the one Callie rested on her thigh. "Call Karev first?" she pleaded. Her voice cracked, indicating just how little energy she had to talk for herself.

Callie sighed and switched numbers, giving Arizona's leg a reassuring squeeze as she waited for hospital admin to pick up.

Right now surgery was the last of Arizona's worries - if the elevators weren't fixed by the time she finished her shift, she had no freaking clue how she would get home at the end of the day.

**#*#***

After a hellish morning, Callie was relying solely on coffee to keep her on her feet. She was still pissed at building management for not fixing the elevator issue sooner and worried incessantly about how Arizona was doing up in Peds. She would have suggested that her wife take the day off but there was no way for her to get back to their apartment. Instead Callie had called a cab to take them the one and a half blocks to the staff entrance around the building, where there was an elevator that took them right to the staff room corridor. Arizona had been too exhausted to argue.

It was a little after eleven a.m. when she found herself checking email in the post-op wing, skimming through advertisements and chain letters. She deleted a bunch of stuff without paying too much attention and almost didn't notice when Alex appeared over her shoulder.

"Where's your wife?"

Callie clicked off of a staff newsletter and pivoted around in her chair. "What do you mean 'where's my wife'? She's with you until noon."

Alex scrunched his forehead. "No she's not. She left early to check on our post-ops and then she said she was having an early lunch with you. Over an hour ago."

Callie immediately frowned and dug in her labcoat pocket for her phone. There were no new messages. "Uh- r-right, yeah, I forgot. We were going to meet, she just had a...thing first," she lied.

Alex wasn't convinced. "What thing?"

"A thing-thing," Callie snapped, arching a challenging brow. "Mind your own business, Karev."

He shot her a nasty look before glancing at the OR board nearby. "Well if she decides that she's actually on the clock today, tell her to find me. Our last surgery was pushed 'til two because Shepherd ordered another MRI on the patient."

Something told Callie that Alex might be flying solo on that one. "I'll let her know." She watched her wife's fellow stalk off with a stick up his ass, far too worried to find it amusing.

Just as she signed out of her email and stood up, her phone beeped. It was a huge relief to find Arizona's name on the screen.

_I'm in the ICU on-call room. Got some spare time?_

Callie sent a quick '_be right there xo_' before shoving the phone in her pocket and jogging to the elevator.

**#*#***

A Gatorade and a ton of paperwork were all that got Arizona through the first three hours of her shift. She went into the OR for the tumour resection part of the surgery and fed Alex a story about getting held up with an ortho consult. She was pretty sure he mistook that for a sex euphemism but she was too bloody tired to care. After the most complicated part was complete, she let Alex and his residents close up and went back to her office, where she stayed filling out insurance forms for the department.

Eventually even that was too much work. Her left leg was absolutely _killing_ her and she needed a break to take her prosthetic off. That was how Callie found her when she knocked on the on-call room door; sprawled across the bottom bunk on her back with the prosthetic leaning up against the far wall.

Closing the door behind her, Callie locked it and stepped into the room. "Hey. Is everything okay?"

Arizona opened her eyes and flashed her wife a friendly smile. "Yeah, everything's fine. I just needed a bit of a break." She scooted closer to the wall. "Care to join me?"

Feeling her spirits lift at the offer, Callie shrugged off her labcoat and dumped it on another bed. She sat on the mattress and allowed her eyes to drift to Arizona's legs. "Pretty sore from earlier, huh?"

Arizona looked down at the bike shorts she had in place of scrub pants, which were hanging off of her prosthetic. "Yeah. Needless to say, I won't be climbing the Space Needle any time soon. Jumping off would be less painful."

Cringing, Callie laid down and folded her hands behind her head. She was a little surprised at how casual her wife was at exposing her leg; usually Arizona insisted on being under the covers before Callie climbed into bed. Perhaps she was just too tired to care.

"How was your morning?"

"Awful," Arizona admitted, groaning as she shuffled closer and rested her cheek on Callie's shoulder. "Karev has been like a needy puppy because he hates Barnett. The guy is a douche but he's still an attending. It wouldn't kill Alex to go to him once in a while."

"He just respects you more."

"I'm too cranky to deal with his issues today." Arizona wrinkled her nose. "Does that make me mean?"

"It makes you human," Callie mused, looking down and meeting blue eyes with a light smile. "You have more patience and people skills than ninety-five percent of the staff in this hospital. You're allowed to have crabby days."

"I think I used them all up in the last six months."

Chuckling, Callie shifted so she could wrap both arms around Arizona, enjoying how easily her wife snuggled into the embrace. She didn't seem in the least bit fazed about her left thigh resting against Callie's. "I've missed this."

"Me too." Arizona draped an arm across Callie's stomach and slipped her fingers beneath the hem of her scrub top. "I really wish we could spend all day in here instead of working. Or that the elevator was functioning so we could go home and relax."

"I talked to the building manager. He said that maintenance should have it fixed by six."

Arizona groaned. "Should? _Six?_ That's seven hours from now."

Callie felt really bad as she squeezed Arizona's shoulders. "We can always book a room at the Archfield. It'll be like a mini vacation."

"Except we both have to work tomorrow and you'd have to go up and down the stairs solo with all of Sofia's stuff," Arizona pointed out.

Frowning, Callie started to feel even more worried about what they would do if the problem wasn't fixed by the end of the night. "I guess it's kind of a shitty place to live given the circumstances, huh?"

"It's a good apartment," Arizona countered, "but...yeah. I'm starting to see the downsides." She loved living in the place where she had fallen in love with the woman of her dreams. They had so many memories there, with the good far outweighing the bad, but this was just the latest in a string of incidents that made her feel like they should consider moving. Some place with a yard and fewer stairs. Somewhere that was just the two of them and their daughter, with no noisy neighbours throwing Friday night keggers or weekly bachelor parties.

"Maybe we should start looking."

Arizona lifted her head from Callie's shoulder and looked at her in surprise. "Really? But I thought..."

"I know," Callie said quietly, tugging absentmindedly on her wife's scrubs. "Selling both places won't be easy, but we have other circumstances we need to worry about now. Today really made me see that."

Arizona smiled gently, stroking her fingertips along Callie's sternum. "Really? Because I'll understand if you want to keep Mark's place a little longer."

The familiar sadness that weighed on Callie's heart hurt just a little bit less with the gentle hand resting above it. "I know. It's hard, but you were right before, Sofia's getting too big not to have a yard. And it's ridiculous to ask you to live on the fifth floor of a building where the elevator can't be relied on. And you said it yourself, if there was an emergency..."

Arizona chewed thoughtfully on her bottom lip. "Are you sure we can afford it? We did just buy a whole hospital."

"And kept some change for our real estate future," Callie reminded her. "I don't think it'll hurt to start looking. We'll know when we find the right place, whenever that is."

The sincerity in Callie's voice was enough to override all of Arizona's aches and pains from the day. "I love you, you know that, right?"

Callie tightened her arms around Arizona's waist and gently rolled the lithe form on top of her. "I love you too."

Arizona dropped her lips and pressed a slow kiss against Callie's. As far as she was concerned, there was no harm in a ten minute make-out session before they both went back to work.


End file.
